


Sleepwalking

by Fenix21



Series: The Long Good Bye [2]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Amelia's POV, Dean's in purgatory, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, One Shot, post season seven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-05-10
Packaged: 2018-03-29 22:42:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3913363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fenix21/pseuds/Fenix21
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>His loss was still fresh, fresh within days maybe, the way he kept leaving space for someone else his body remembered should be standing close by but that his brain was still forgetting they no longer occupied.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepwalking

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by John Paul White's 'Sleepwalking' from _The Long Goodbye_
> 
> Song can be heard [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFzp8Q7c-U4>HERE</a>%0A%0AThis%20is%20written%20from%20Amelia%20Richardson's%20POV)

They say it takes one to know one.

So, she wasn't really surprised to look into the man's eyes and recognize the desperation there that went so much deeper than for the poor broken animal in his arms. It was a desperation that needed to move before it sank too deep and did too much damage. She'd felt the same itch under her skin not so long ago. Moving had helped at first, out of her house, her town, her life, but it wasn't enough; throw some tequila and bourbon at it every night for three months, though, and it eventually started to mellow. 

But he hadn't reached that point, yet. His loss was still fresh, fresh within days maybe, the way he kept leaving space for someone else his body remembered should be standing close by but that his brain was still forgetting they no longer occupied.

And that was the reason she honestly _was_ surprised when he was still around after she finished stitching the mutt up. 

'Give the man a medal,' she taunted when he tried to leave afterward, only because his pain was showing hers too vividly, and it was fraying at the edges of her own hastily patched wounds. Her cruel words sparked a hurt in his eyes, though, that went deeper than abandoning something that didn't belong to him anyway and scraped across failures a lifetime in the making and culminating in this loss that rode so close to his skin.

He took the dog in the end, some subconscious part of himself snapping it up as the last offered thread to hold onto a life he wasn't sure he could live anymore, maybe. She was jealous of that. He would have something in the cocoon of his self-imposed silence after the pain and desperation crystalized around him to hold him static and apart—something to keep him company, to provide a little bit of a connection. She had nothing, no one. She was living in the dry husk of her own poisoned, congealed grief all alone.

——

He named the dog 'Dog' and handled it like he'd never had a pet before, taking care of it like he was following a text book recommendation. It made her wonder what kind of life he'd lived that he had never had any kind of pet to care for. He'd cared for something—someone—very deeply, though. That much was obvious in the singular intensity he devoted to Dog.

She would have let him go on his way even if he hadn't take the dog and then not thought another thing about him, happy to stay in her shell and work through her daily routine that didn't change because change would mean feeling and she wasn't ready for that yet.

Life, though, had other ideas.

'Amelia. Richardson.'

'Sam Winchester.'

'Like the rifle.'

'Yeah.'

After she accused him of being a murderous drifter-stalker who, inadvertently, repaired sinks and knew the name of the motel desk clerk and his father, he still introduced himself and then sat down inside her life and proceeded to deduce everything about her like it was only so many words on a page to him. For an instant she was angry at the intrusion, because what right did he have? Until she realized the book he was quoting was his own, and this was not a gesture of kindness or pity toward her but a plea for himself, for a lifeline to tow him back to a purpose so he could go on living.

——

They say time heals.

Amelia didn't particularly believe that was true. Sam was not a replacement for Don, and she could not fill the empty space Sam still left at his shoulder even after a year together.

They climbed inside each other's space, took care of Dog, bought a house, built a new normal that included the pain and loneliness as something that would always be with them. They didn't try to heal each other, they just listened to each other and learned what not to say and where not to touch that would cause old wounds to bleed.

She eventually began to think that this was her new happiness—Sam and Dog—and that this would be an okay way to spend the rest of her life. Sam eventually quit having nightmares and made it through most days now unsurprised at the banality of his new life and without looking over his shoulder like something was going to come out of the shadows at him; and if he couldn't quite remember that there was no one to keep in step with and no one to answer his sudden random thought spoken out loud, well, that was just one more thing they had to build into their 'normal.'

The only thing that held them back from sealing the deal happened at night when she rose up over him, straddling his rolling hips, holding herself against the incredible force of the grief that fueled his passion; and she knew it was grief because in the moment he filled her, shattering under her and inside of her, the name on his lips was always the same,

'Dean…God, Dean…please!'

He was begging for release, but more than that, for forgiveness, absolution, and he didn't even know it.

Every time, as she spread herself spent and languid, over his chest, she would reach to find tears on his cheeks, and he always seemed surprised like he couldn't remember that name that spilled from him so tortured and needy.

——

When the phone call came to tell her that she was living her life inside out and the reality she had wrapped herself in with Sam was now the dream she could leave behind, she knew without a doubt he would be gone by morning. 

Because his grip on what they shared was still tenuous and disbelieving despite his earnest efforts, and all those nights crying out his brother's name was just him asking for an escape; because the empty space at his shoulder was still there, and he still subtly shifted himself when she stood in it, never allowing her to fill it, to banish the ghost it represented.

So, she let him go and turned her face into her pillow to stifle her tears, knowing that when the sun rose in a few hours they would both wake up, and then wake up again, and the dreaming would be done.


End file.
